I can see how this can be a triggering watch if you are a beat copper LEO (specifically at the municipal level, as this story was about how the Feds and County came in, took down the crooked cops, and looked triumphant in the end), especially because of the amount of bad street policing and policy that are explored during this series. It's critical look, but it is fair as Simon, like usual, spares no sacred cows. There's no simple story here, just layers and fault all around, which is Simon's MO for all of the series and novels he writes.
The series follows closely Justin Fenton's book with regards to how the GTTF of Baltimore City were modern day pirates, doing everything from putting away violent offenders, putting away drug dealers and stealing all of their proceeds (money, guns and drugs), putting away innocents and stealing a load of their money, and taxpayer-funded overtime from everyone in the city.
While this is the main storyline, Simon intertwines a whole bunch of other stories like the Freddie Gray Riots, the consent decree investigative process against the Baltimore Police Department, and even the mysterious death of BPD Detective and former GTTF member Sean Suiter towards the end of the series. This feels like overload at best, where even eight episodes might not thoroughly cover it all well.
It is a lot of content for six episodes, which is where my complaints generally come from. The time shifting doesn't help all that much either, as there are multiple time shifts back and forth (at least 4-6 per episode from my count) as that is just way too much to deal with. You blink and then miss a timeline change, which was in the form of a tiring cutaway of someone electronically filling out a timesheet, and can only tell there was a shift by the model of police cars, cell phones, other civilian cars and clothing of what year it could be.
While the series was true to the book, the novel was more thorough because it wasn't jammed into having a script limit like this series did. It feels that is one of David Simon's big downfalls here, is that he didn't want to do more episodes on these storylines and deep dive some of the other angles. As one example, it feels this whole series rushed through the trials part (even though most of them plead guilty), and then rushed through the fallout of what happened with the Mayor, new chief, and the overall crime rise in the city. To add, he didn't really explain why the War on Drugs reinforced these bad behaviors as that would have been nice, but instead we get less than eight minutes with the grizzled, old school detective who is now at the BPD training facility teaching ethics. Simon whole narrative says, "It's the War on Drugs" causing this, but he doesn't show how it's causing this. That's what I wanted to see explained in further detail.
Further, I do think David Simon's people skills being so rough in the industry and his complex relationship with HBO was the fault line that prevented another 2-4 deserved episodes from being in this series. Heck, he even admitted his own persona was the problem in a lot of the recent 20th Anniversary of The Wire interviews he did over the course of the summer. I know the word on the street has been that he does not play well with others all that much, but it feels like someone down the road should be able to pick up whenever Simon and Ed Burns decide to retire. Regardless, what they did was important TV that will survive for many more decades. I believe this series will be the same.
As for the next generation of storytellers like this, I keep wondering who will take up the mantle here as a lot has changed in terms of the way urban life, disfunction and crime is covered in these areas now with the overall Press being decimated compared to the Baby Boomer/Gen X era.
We need more good content like this, if not better, going beyond The Wire.
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